William King Harvey has been described as "America's James Bond," and was introduced to President Kennedy in the Oval Office when JFK asked to meet "America's James Bond."
Unlike his British counter-part - James Bond 007 - Harvey was an overweight, pear shaped drunkard, who carried two guns that he had to relinquish to the Secret Service agent at the Oval Office door before being allowed in to meet the President.
After running the Berlin Tunnel project, Harvey was brought back to the USA to head Task Force W - the Cuban Operations group in the basement of the new CIA HQ.
Harvey did not get along with RFK, and when the Attorney General visited Task Force W Harvey pulled a cable that had just come in out of the hands of RFK saying he didn't have the clearance to read it.
During the Cuban Missile Crisis, after RFK had ordered a halt to all covert ops against Cuba, Harvey sent in a special commando team that he couldn't call back, an action that led to RFK removing him as head of Task Force W, replacing him with Desmond FitzGerald, the swave, tennis playing CIA agent who did resemble James Bond, and was involved in both AMLASH and the briefing of the Joint Chiefs of Staff on Cuban Ops that included the study of the July 20, 1944 assassination attempt against Hitler to use on Castro.
As a Counter-Intelligence Agent Harvey was one of the first to pin the tail on Kim Philby as the Third Man after the defection of British-Soviet Double-agents Guy Burgess and Donald McClean.
There are accounts of a party given by Philby where Burgess and Harvey end the party in a fist fight over an flattering drawing Burgess made of Harvey's wife.
The official biography of Harvey - Stockton's Flawed Patriot, is very important, though Stockton, a former CIA agent himself, died before the book was published.
Two other articles are significant and are available on line, David Martin's "Loaded Gun" in the Washington Post, material also included in Martin's book "Wilderness of Mirrors," and Martin's "America's James Bond," published in Playboy.
Harvey Docs:
Re: David Martin and David Phillips and William Harvey :
Washington Post – The CIA’s ‘Loaded Gun” by David Martin.
America’s James Bond – By David C. Martin - Playboy April 1980 Vol. 27, no. 4 (Weisberg Collection/Hood)
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